“Good God, man,” Sir Henry choked. “Can’t you see the poor girl is all broken up about it?”
“My lady?” Lord Vitor said.
Ravenna squeezed her hand. “Tell him, Grace.
Grace shook her head and mumbled, “Poison. In the wine.” Then she choked and the tears began anew.
She did not do it. Ravenna looked across the room and saw in his eyes that his thoughts matched hers.
Penelope took her mother’s arm. “She made me give him the wine, Mama. She told me it was to relax him so that he would accept her when she offered herself to— I am too ashamed to say it.” She pressed her palm to her mouth and shut her eyes as though horrified by her sister’s wanton indiscretion.
“He was a handsome man, Grace,” Iona said quietly. “Ye coulda done much worse.” She understood too. Grace had not killed the man she loved.
Penelope was lying.
“Grace.” Ravenna leaned forward and said beside the girl’s bent head, “If you do not tell the truth now, they will hang you for the murder of the man you loved.”
“I don’t care.” Her words were barely a breath. “I don’t wish to live now.”
“If you do not do this for yourself”—Ravenna’s throat caught—“do it for he who loved you and would wish your happiness now above all.”
Grace’s shoulders stiffened. Then she lifted her head and looked straight at her mother. Her face was blotched red and white, and damp, but her eyes glittered.
“I did not ask Pen to offer him wine to make him accept me. I had given myself to him before and he wanted to marry me. He begged to marry me and I wanted to be his wife more than anything in this world.” She looked to her father. “But Mama would not allow it. I offered him the wine because Mama said I must. He came here to beg you for my hand, though Mama had warned that she would ruin him if he came between our family and marriage to a prince. When I refused to endanger him, she told Pen to write the note and then she poured a drug in the wine to make him sick.” Her face crumpled. “But instead she poisoned him. She gave him too much and she killed him.” She dissolved into sobbing again and Ravenna drew her against her shoulder and stroked her smooth locks.
“I did not,” Lady Whitebarrow said coldly.
“What did you not do?” Lord Whitebarrow’s face was hard with fury. “Indulge in overweening pride sufficient to break our daughter’s heart, or kill a man in cold blood? For, let us make no mistake, I believe you capable of both.”
“He was unsuitable,” Lady Whitebarrow said through pinched lips. “Their liaison was unseemly.”
“So speaks the coldest woman I have ever known,” her husband said.
“His situation was vastly inferior to that which I intended for my daughters.”
“So you killed him?”
“Of course I did not.” Scorn coated her words. “I intended to make him ill so he would not be able to press his suit upon Grace here. I only dosed him with the smallest amount, enough to sicken him but certainly insufficient to cause permanent harm.” She turned to Grace. “It was for your good and your sister’s. Do you see how you have ruined us now, bringing scandal upon our family? What prince will have your sister now?”
“Not I, that’s for certain,” Prince Sebastiao said with a shrug.
“Lady Grace,” Lord Vitor said, “why in his drugged state did Mr. Walsh don a suit of armor? Do you know?”
Her lips made a quavering smile. “He always called me his gracious lady. He pretended to be my knight and he said he would build me a castle and make my dreams come true. Perhaps the drug made him imagine that . . . Perhaps . . .” She looked to her father. “He wanted to make me his queen.”
“How was he killed?” Lord Whitebarrow demanded of Lord Vitor. “With poison?”
“He bled to death,” Grace said quietly, as though all her grief had been spent and now she knew only numbness. “After Penny and Mama went to bed, I went searching for him. I f-found him.” Her voice broke again and her chin trembled. “There was nothing I could do. It was too late. I closed his eyes and kissed him and bid him adieu.” She looked at her twin and her eyes hardened. “Did you do it, Penelope? Did you cut him there because you had never known a man’s touch and you were jealous of me? Of Oliver and me together? Do you fear that your heart is so cold that even if a man does touch you, you will never enjoy it?”
Penelope’s eyes shot wide. “I don’t know what you are accusing me of, sister, except that your mind is disordered. I did nothing to him. I wrote the note and watched you offer him the wine, but I did nothing else.” Her gaze shot between Lord Vitor and the prince. “I swear it.”
“Guid heavens,” the duchess exclaimed, “was the poor man unmanned?”
Prince Sebastiao dropped back a step and looked to Vitor. “Unmanned?”
Lady Margaret fluttered her kerchief over her bosom. “Ann, dearest, cover your ears. My lords, this conversation is unsuitable in present company.”
“Was it you, Olympia?” Lord Whitebarrow said to his wife. “Did you castrate Walsh?”
Lady Margaret gasped. Ann’s eyes went round as carriage wheels.
“If I wished to do such a thing to a man, Frederick,” Lady Whitebarrow said icily to her husband, “don’t you imagine I would have begun closer to home?”
Cecilia grinned. Martin Anders turned green. Iona bit her pretty lip.
“Grace,” Ravenna said, “who forced you to meet that guard in the armory? His disappearance since yesterday suggests that he was connected in some manner to the murder. It was clear to me that you did not meet him voluntarily.”
“My sister. As soon as everyone started whispering that you and Lord Vitor were pursuing the murderer, she feared you would discover my family’s blame, and her chances of being a princess would be ruined. She paid those guards every penny she had to frighten you and Lord Vitor from investigating further. But they demanded more.”
“They demanded you?”
“They demanded her.” Her eyes narrowed upon her twin. “So she sold me to them instead. She said that while she was still pure and fit to wed, I was already—already defiled, so I would not be harmed by it. I told her I could not, that I would swoon.” Her voice tightened. “So she made me drink the drugged wine before I met him. She said it would make it bearable.”
Ravenna’s stomach sickened. She leaned in to Grace. “There is no defilement in what you did with Mr. Walsh.” Animals mated whenever the urge to breed came upon them and that was considered acceptable. “The joining of two people in love cannot be wrong.”
“Well, then,” Sir Henry exclaimed, “who did the dirty deed in the end? Who in the name of Zeus is the murderer?”
From beside the prince came the clipped Gallic accents of the butler of Chevriot.
“C’est moi,” said Monsieur Brazil. “I killed Monsieur Walsh.”
Chapter 19
Naturally
“The butler did it?” Sir Henry gaped.
Everyone stared. Wide-eyed. Astonished.
Vitor watched Ravenna release Lady Grace’s hand and rise to her feet.
“That night, Monsieur Brazil, after you assisted in carrying the body to the parlor in which we examined it,” Ravenna said, “you left for a time. When you returned I noticed that you wore a fresh coat and trousers. It seemed odd to me that you would change your clothing only in order to lock that parlor door and bid us good night. You had not touched the body while it was moved, and you must have belatedly noticed that a piece of your clothing was stained with his blood. You did not wish us to see that.”